The Subjection of Women
to be. It is hardly possible for one who is in these bonds, to attain
exalted virtue. If he differs in his opinion from the mass--if he
sees truths which have not yet dawned upon them, or if, feeling in
his heart truths which they nominally recognise, he would like to act
up to those truths more conscientiously than the generality of
mankind--to all such thoughts and desires, marriage is the heaviest
of drawbacks, unless he be so fortunate as to have a wife as much
above the common level as he himself is.
For, in the first place, there is always some sacrifice of personal
interest required; either of social consequence, or of pecuniary
means; perhaps the risk of even the means of subsistence. These
sacrifices and risks he may be willing to encounter for himself; but
he will pause before he imposes them on his family. And his family in
this case means his wife and daughters; for he always hopes that his
sons will feel as he feels himself, and that what he can do without,
they will do without, willingly, in the same cause. But his
daughters--their marriage may depend upon it: and his wife, who is
unable to enter into or understand the objects for which these
sacrifices are made--who, if she thought them worth any sacrifice,
would think so on trust, and solely for his sake--who can participate
in none of the enthusiasm or the self-approbation he himself may
feel, while the things which he is disposed to sacrifice are all in
all to her; will not the best and most unselfish man hesitate the
longest before bringing on her this consequence? If it be not the
comforts of life, but only social consideration, that is at stake,
the burthen upon his conscience and feelings is still very severe.
Whoever has a wife and children has given hostages to Mrs. Grundy.
The approbation of that potentate may be a matter of indifference to
him, but it is of great importance to his wife. The man himself may
be above opinion, or may find sufficient compensation in the opinion
of those of his own way of thinking. But to the women connected with
him, he can offer no compensation. The almost invariable tendency of
the wife to place her influence in the same scale with social
consideration, is sometimes made a reproach to women, and represented
as a peculiar trait of feebleness and childishness of character in
them: surely with great injustice. Society makes the whole life of a
woman, in the easy classes, a continued self-sacrifice; it exacts
from her an unremitting restraint of the whole of her natural
inclinations, and the sole return it makes to her for what often
deserves the name of a martyrdom, is consideration. Her consideration
is inseparably connected with that of her husband, and after paying
the full price for it, she finds that she is to lose it, for no
reason of which she can feel the cogency. She has sacrificed her
whole life to it, and her husband will not sacrifice to it a whim, a
freak, an eccentricity; something not recognised or allowed for by
the world, and which the world will agree with her in thinking a
folly, if it thinks no worse! The dilemma is hardest upon that very
meritorious class of men, who, without possessing talents which
qualify them to make a figure among those with whom they agree in
opinion, hold their opinion from conviction, and feel bound in honour
and conscience to serve it, by making profession of their belief, and
giving their time, labour, and means, to anything undertaken in its
behalf. The worst case of all is when such men happen to be of a rank
and position which of itself neither gives them, nor excludes them
from, what is considered the best society; when their admission to it
depends mainly on what is thought of them personally--and however
unexceptionable their breeding and habits, their being identified
with opinions and public conduct unacceptable to those who give the
tone to society would operate as an effectual exclusion. Many a woman
flatters herself (nine times out of ten quite erroneously) that
nothing prevents her and her husband from moving in the highest
society of her neighbourhood--society in which others well known to
her, and in the same class of life, mix freely--except that her
husband is unfortunately a Dissenter, or has the reputation of
mingling in low radical politics. That it is, she thinks, which
hinders George from getting a commission or a place, Caroline from
making an advantageous match, and prevents her and her husband from
obtaining invitations, perhaps honours, which, for aught she sees,
they are as well entitled to as some folks. With such an influence in
every house, either exerted actively, or operating all the more
powerfully for not being asserted, is it any wonder that people in
general are kept down in that mediocrity of respectability which is
becoming a marked characteristic of modern times?
There is another very injurious aspect in which the effect, not of
women's disabilities directly, but of the broad line of difference
which those disabilities create between the education and character
of a woman and that of a man, requires to be considered. Nothing can
be more unfavourable to that union of thoughts and inclinations which
is the ideal of married life. Intimate society between people
radically dissimilar to one another, is an idle dream. Unlikeness may
attract, but it is likeness which retains; and in proportion to the
likeness is the suitability of the individuals to give each other a
happy life. While women are so unlike men, it is not wonderful that
selfish men should feel the need of arbitrary power in their own
hands, to arrest _in limine_ the life-long conflict of inclinations,
by deciding every question on the side of their own preference. When
people are extremely unlike, there can be no real identity of
interest. Very often there is conscientious difference of opinion
between married people, on the highest points of duty. Is there any
reality in the marriage union where this takes place? Yet it is not
uncommon anywhere, when the woman has any earnestness of character;
and it is a very general case indeed in Catholic countries, when she
is supported in her dissent by the only other authority to which she
is taught to bow, the priest. With the usual barefacedness of power
not accustomed to find itself disputed, the influence of priests over
women is attacked by Protestant and Liberal writers, less for being
bad in itself, than because it is a rival authority to the husband,
and raises up a revolt against his infallibility. In England, similar
differences occasionally exist when an Evangelical wife has allied
herself with a husband of a different quality; but in general this
source at least of dissension is got rid of, by reducing the minds of
women to such a nullity, that they have no opinions but those of Mrs.
Grundy, or those which the husband tells them to have. When there is
no difference of opinion, differences merely of taste may be
sufficient to detract greatly from the happiness of married life. And
though it may stimulate the amatory propensities of men, it does not
conduce to married happiness, to exaggerate by differences of
education whatever may be the native differences of the sexes. If the
married pair are well-bred and well-behaved people, they tolerate
each other's tastes; but is mutual toleration what people look
forward to, when they enter into marriage? These differences of
inclination will naturally make their wishes different, if not
restrained by affection or duty, as to almost all domestic questions
which arise. What a difference there must be in the society which the
two persons will wish to frequent, or be frequented by! Each will
desire associates who share their own tastes: the persons agreeable
to one, will be indifferent or positively disagreeable to the other;
yet there can be none who are not common to both, for married people
do not now live in different parts of the house and have totally
different visiting lists, as in the reign of Louis XV. They cannot
help having different wishes as to the bringing up of the children:
each will wish to see reproduced in them their own tastes and
sentiments: and there is either a compromise, and only a
half-satisfaction to either, or the wife has to yield--often with
bitter suffering; and, with or without intention, her occult
influence continues to counterwork the husband's purposes.
It would of course be extreme folly to suppose that these differences
of feeling and inclination only exist because women are brought up
differently from men, and that there would not be differences of
taste under any imaginable circumstances. But there is nothing beyond
the mark in saying that the distinction in bringing-up immensely
aggravates those differences, and renders them wholly inevitable.
While women are brought up as they are, a man and a woman will but
rarely find in one another real agreement of tastes and wishes as to
daily life. They will generally have to give it up as hopeless, and
renounce the attempt to have, in the intimate associate of their
daily life, that _idem velle, idem nolle_, which is the recognised
bond of any society that is really such: or if the man succeeds in
obtaining it, he does so by choosing a woman who is so complete a
nullity that she has no _velle_ or _nolle_ at all, and is as ready to
comply with one thing as another if anybody tells her to do so. Even
this calculation is apt to fail; dulness and want of spirit are not
always a guarantee of the submission which is so confidently expected
from them. But if they were, is this the ideal of marriage? What, in
this case, does the man obtain by it, except an upper servant, a
nurse, or a mistress? On the contrary, when each of two persons,
instead of being a nothing, is a something; when they are attached to
one another, and are not too much unlike to begin with; the constant
partaking in the same things, assisted by their sympathy, draws out
the latent capacities of each for being interested in the things
which were at first interesting only to the other; and works a
gradual assimilation of the tastes and characters to one another,
partly by the insensible modification of each, but more by a real
enriching of the two natures, each acquiring the tastes and
capacities of the other in addition to its own. This often happens
between two friends of the same sex, who are much associated in their
daily life: and it would be a common, if not the commonest, case in
marriage, did not the totally different bringing-up of the two sexes
make it next to an impossibility to form a really well-assorted
union. Were this remedied, whatever differences there might still be
in individual tastes, there would at least be, as a general rule,
complete unity and unanimity as to the great objects of life. When
the two persons both care for great objects, and are a help and
encouragement to each other in whatever regards these, the minor
matters on which their tastes may differ are not all-important to
them; and there is a foundation for solid friendship, of an enduring
character, more likely than anything else to make it, through the
whole of life, a greater pleasure to each to give pleasure to the
other, than to receive it.
I have considered, thus far, the effects on the pleasures and
benefits of the marriage union which depend on the mere unlikeness
between the wife and the husband: but the evil tendency is
prodigiously aggravated when the unlikeness is inferiority. Mere
unlikeness, when it only means difference of good qualities, may be
more a benefit in the way of mutual improvement, than a drawback from
comfort. When each emulates, and desires and endeavours to acquire,
the other's peculiar qualities, the difference does not produce
diversity of interest, but increased identity of it, and makes each